A quick thread on why most autistic neurodiversity specialists like me do indeed know about people who have high support needs, and do indeed care very much about their lives and outcomes. We get a lot of misunderstandings.
So.../ Let's start by hearing from a huge number of neurodiversity supporters (those who want society to truly include neurodivergent people, instead of enforcing unwanted treatments/interventions on too many ppl).
Do we support human rights for *all* autistic people, for example? Yep.

Today, I would like to take a gentle stroll through this, by a person in charge of education that we shall not name, and who , it appears, blocks anyone who asks questions. Alleged Misconception: All behaviour is caused by an unmet need.

Arguably, it really is. Sometimes the need is about needing extra time to develop, or needing people to understand, be curious, etc. Sometimes it's a need for medical review e.g. pain conditions and/

Positive Behaviour Support (PBS). The industry is trying to get some more evidence of it 'working'.
Thus, a new bit of research.
I want to take a look at this, in a bit of detail. You may be surprised by some findings.
A thread relevant to autism/LD /onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.111… This is a team looking at people with a learning disability, sometimes called 'intellectual disability'. I'll shorten to PWLD here.
They contacted 167 organisations to see if they wanted to let them experiment on people, using PBS. 7 said yes/

A thread about the shocking life experiences of many autistic people.
This is a tough read, but an important one. It follows the recent discussion over too many teams asking poorly-phrased questions, then declaring autistic people are 'paranoid'.

What does the research show? / .
is our starting point about whether in general autistic people are 'paranoid' about e.g. whether some people think negatively about them.
It turns out it's absolutely accurate. I'll talk us through some findings/ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Goodness me. What next, eh?
A team notes that autistic people experience "..negative experiences of social interaction, rejection, victimisation and bullying", and then try to claim that resulting wariness of others is 'paranoia'.
Sigh.
link.springer.com/article/10.100… Let's have a look at how they are measuring 'paranoid', shall we? They use the Green Paranoid Thoughts Scale.
Here we go:
"I spend time thinking about friends gossiping about me".
How much time? Even 1 min a year is 'time'. Literal autistic answer therefore, "Yes"./

Brand new ABA. "We don't stop autistic children stimming, Ann".
Do they still stop them stimming? Yes indeed they do.
Feast your astonished eyes on this extraordinary new thing & what the team tried to stop: /
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01…
The ABA team tried to stop autistic children doing these:
Arm swinging
Moving their fingers
Flapping their hands
Trying to block noise by putting fingers in ears
Playing in autistic ways
Shaking a piece of string/

Handy.
You know that for years, autistic ppl have been told that screening tests aren't accurate at finding autistic ppl, and self-identity is therefore total rubbish?

Well, there's news... /journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13… This for example is one of the tests the researchers looked at.
And they found that people who self-identified as autistic had the same scores as people who were professionally diagnosed.
Well well/embrace-autism.com/raads-r/

More Brand New ABA, readers.

Stopping autistic children from playing and learning in naturally autistic ways, based on ancient results.
Let's have a look at some of their evidence:/proquest.com/openview/9f8f7… Firstly, this is someone who has put this in as their PhD work. So, after years of patient study and allegedly top academic excellence.
They tell us they looked at Rodriguez & team, in 2012 (14 yrs ago) who said that stereotyped play was socially stigmatising.
So, I looked too/

Brand new ABA.

An ABA research team look at children as young as 3, who fight back against ABA teams, in padded cells, and how the ABA team can keep forcing the child to comply.
No mention of consent, assent, harms, etc.
Plenty of mention of punishments/onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.100… I'll put up a few snips from the paper, as illustrations of the above.
This one gives the diagnoses. Nearly all autistic/

"But it works!"
A look at what may actually be happening, with Applied Behaviour Analysis and autistic children.

We get a few people saying, "But it worked for my child!"
Was that a result of ABA?
A thread/ This is all based on actual experience and actual data.
Here we go:

a) What do they mean by 'works'? Who decided what they were measuring? The child? Autistic specialists? Did it consider genuinely different autistic ways of playing, learning, communicating?/

Today, a mini-guide on why autistic people need advance information.
Why it's not 'unreasonable'.
Why telling us to 'just relax' isn't an answer.
And how to get some fantastic results.
A thread based on 30+ years in this industry as a trainer, lecturer, researcher, etc/ Here we go.
It's a generalisation. People are individuals. Experiences may vary.
But, generally...
Autistic brains take in too much information at once.
This can be very useful. Or not. /

Sigh. Brand new ABA. An 8 month old baby is given ABA to enforce use of hand signals from them.

I am especially concerned about this:
/ link.springer.com/article/10.100…
It shows how long the baby was crying for, during ABA.
At about session 18, the baby was crying intensely.
Then the crying stopped.
The team claim a success.
What was the success? Teaching a baby that the team will keep doing ABA whether you cry or not? Mmm?/

I read so much misinformation about our lovely autistic people.
Occasionally, it's useful for us to look at what the actual research says, rather than what a few people say in the media to get themselves more clicks. This is a thread/ How many lovely autistic people? Well, about 1 in 30 of everyone you know.
Your family members, maybe.
Your neighbours.
Your work colleagues.
Your medical professionals.
Your shopkeepers.
Your emergency service personnel.
Teachers.
Parents.
Grandparents.
Friends/

Today, friends, I'd like your help in explaining something.
Specifically, people who say, "But if you're not polite & nice when talking about the practices uncovered in some ABA settings, people won't listen or want to change it. You have to win their co-operation."

Comments? PS, as ever, I tend to use the 'like' button to acknowledge I've read a comment.
Thank you to all contributing here. It's an important discussion, because even bigger organisations get caught in the 'teach autistic to be polite, or we won't listen to them being in pain' thing.

Aha. Thread.
It's the latest research on Positive Behaviour Support (based on ABA), and whether it makes people with learning disabilities less 'irritable' and less 'lethargic'.
By gum, there's some findings in this.
Let's have a look.
Here's the link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ja… Let's remind ourselves that Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) is the approved way of dealing with autistic people & people with learning disabilities in hospitals, care homes etc. So, logically, it's good really good evidence of working, yes?
Has it?
Here we go/

Whilst we're here, "Level 1, 2 and 3 autism".
The fiction that there are three neat categories into which we can be placed, which apply to everything we are and do, which are caused solely by 'autism', and which stay the same for life. Really?
Let's think about this/ I started life as a nonspeaking autistic child, terrified of changes in routine, flapping and rocking in a corner, lining things up, completely bewildered about how to relate to others.
So, level 3, yes?/

Sigh. Thread.
A research team decided that 37% of autistic children diagnosed when very young ...and then are given normalisation-enforcement, don't look & behave like they are autistic by the time they're 5-7 yrs old. Thus are not autistic/
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap… There's so much that worries me in this.
For a start, they weren't comparing like for like. The initial diagnosis and the re-testing were different, by different teams. At least they admit that - but in the press reports, it's being hyped up as a success for ABA (!)/

Today we will look at another way that teams attempt to erase authentic autistic behaviour from autistic children - and replace it with them acting like nonautistic children - then describing this as a success.
PECS cards.
We start with this paper.
/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37803891/ This team of ABA enthusiasts noticed that previous PECS teams have reported this 'success'.
One such team was who <checks notes> picked 17 young autistic boys and one (yes one) young autistic girl.
Then, took their favourite stuff away from them and/onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.…

Today, I want to look at the Autism Diagnostic Interview - Revised (ADI-R).
It was invented in 2003, before we had a modern understanding of autistic people. Do brace yourselves, lovely readers, because it certainly doesn't spare the humiliating descriptions/ Autistic people wishing to learn more about themselves may find that the diagnostic team has to tick items on this list. Other diagnostic tests are available.
Here we go/

Blimey! Will talk about this more tomorrow. Huge.

https://twitter.com/monadelahooke/status/1678779676800733184

OK, I'm not 100% sure what's actually formal yet. I know that the AMA is one of several groups representing Physicians in the USA.
But this is a real milestone.
To see the concerns put in print, that clearly, is excellent stuff.
The ABA industry is already fighting back, tho

Spotting autism. Or, rather, not spotting it.
A very informal observation of how diagnoses can go wrong.
Let's have a look at the BPRS (Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale). It's often used to diagnose psychosis or schizophrenia. Originally designed in the 1960s/ Quick disclaimer - I am not a medical professional. I train medical professionals on how to spot autism, as someone with four years of Post Grad qualifications and decades of experience in the subject of autism. This is not medical advice etc etc.
Here we go/